Ferguson attorney: Brown family settlement $1.5 million

The $1.5 million awarded this week to the parents of Michael Brown is the latest of several large settlements involving killings of black people by police, but it’s far from the largest.

A federal judge in St. Louis on Tuesday approved the settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Michael Brown Sr. and Lezley McSpadden. Their 18-year-old son was unarmed on Aug. 9, 2014, when he was fatally shot by white officer Darren Wilson during a street confrontation in Ferguson, Missouri.

The shooting launched months of protests and led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found racial bias in Ferguson’s police and court system. But a St. Louis County grand jury and the Justice Department declined to prosecute Wilson, who resigned in November 2014.

Brown’s parents sued the city, former Police Chief Tom Jackson and Wilson in 2015.